Truths
by hooksdarkswan
Summary: To help Jefferson with his chronic nightmares, Emma likes to remind him of the little truths in their life. One-shot. Mad Swan.


_**Author's Note:** I had the most incredible experience this past weekend and met Sebastian Stan (while cosplaying Emma no less) and let's just say the Mad Swan feels came back with a vengeance. Thank you so much for reading!_

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"OFF WITH HIS HEAD!"

Jefferson's shouts echoed through the manor much too large for their stitched together family of four, filling up the mostly empty rooms with a bellow bordering insane. His voice rose unnaturally, seemingly high enough to match the moon looming low. He thrashed and he flopped, flinging his arms crazily. The sheets twisted around him, grasping at his legs, pinning him in place like the queen's soldiers for his beheading. His apparent entrapment made his attempt to escape his night terrors twice as desperate, and sobs began to punctuate his yelling.

Emma bolted upright, a curse on her lips and a prayer in her mind—at least Henry and Grace were with her parents this time. Her hands flew to Jefferson's neck and pulled his fingers away from where he frantically scrabbled to assure its attachment. His nails bit at the backs of her hands as she whispered soothing words, trying to lure him back to their reality in Storybrooke and not his horrid past in Wonderland. She stifled a hiss as he nicked her knuckles, drawing blood; the sound was less one of pain and more born of worry that he would torture himself over harming her again.

"Jefferson," Emma pleaded, trying to steady his wrists. "Come back to me."

Slowly, he did—his cacophony of terror gave way to heaving sobs as his eyes, strangely dark and blown out with adrenaline, flew open. He sought Emma's familiar embrace and folded into it, feeling at the place where the queen's axe lopped his head from his shoulders.

"You're all right," Emma murmured. It tired her—not Jefferson but the curse that tortured him, the one so strong even the Savior couldn't break it. Her eyes closed, briefly, as she pressed a kiss to his head, a wordless apology that she couldn't do more to stave off the madness. "You're not crazy."

She'd tried a myriad of ways to bring him back to reality from his wracks of insanity. In the time they'd been together, she'd learned it was the little reminders that resonated with him the most, the simple truths that broke through the delirium. Emma twisted her fingers through Jefferson's hair, sticky with sweat and terribly messed. She only made it worse. She couldn't help but thinking that in his right mind, he would fuss at her, bat her hand away and drag a comb through it a dozen times. _That_ was her Jefferson, quirky and suave and so infuriatingly pompous she never would have fallen for him if his heart didn't outsize his ego in spades. He was the craziest man she knew but at once the kindest, the most arrogant bastard in Storybrooke and yet the most incredible father—to his child and to hers—she could ever imagine. He could fell her with a smirk, a laugh, with even the faintest glint of mischief in his glassy blue eyes. Jefferson March was so much more than the derangement Regina's actions reduced him to, and Emma quietly swore she'd never forgive her for it.

"You're in Storybrooke," she told him. Emma knew not to mention Wonderland by name—it brought him right back to that awful place, standing convicted of Regina's crime in her own mother's twisted court. Then, with Storybrooke came its own horrible histories, 28 lonely years spent watching the life that was meant to be his through a window. She hoped the last two years made up for nearly three decades of torment, that the little things—picking Grace up from school, having picnics in the marigold field, making their home together—helped mend some of those old wounds.

Emma kissed the crown of Jefferson's head, soft and sweet, her blonde waves falling around him in a gentle curtain. He was shaking still, clinging to her and mumbling words that didn't quite have form. It was better than some of the nights they used to have, the ones where he hissed at her touch and dashed for his scissors and thread, still feeling the compulsion to make hats and escape the prison he didn't realize he was already free from.

Those were the nights that almost undid them. The closest they ever came to breaking up was when Emma realized he'd been self-medicating, nursing the gale of his mind with stolen pills, too much booze and things she couldn't believe he would bring so close to Henry and Grace. What began in shouts ended in tears and Jefferson's promise to make an appointment with Archie the very next morning just as long as Emma stayed. He couldn't lose her, he told her, or Henry, or Grace—God, he couldn't lose Grace again.

"She's safe, you know," Emma said, following her quiet memory. "Our Grace is safe."

That truth made his stirring a little more purposeful. His little girl, even in name alone, always had that effect on him. The way he said it carried a magic beyond anything Emma could ever conjure; it was a holy prayer on his lips, sacred and pure, so much so that it felt nearly sacrilegious to call her _hers_ , too. It was like tampering with the most unyielding of bonds, intruding on the most private of moments.

But God, she was so happy she did.

It was the best birthday present she could have ever asked for, late last October when the young girl cast her arms around Emma's waist and whispered "Happy Birthday, Mom," against her belly. She wanted to give her everything she never had, to guard that good-hearted little girl from ever becoming closed off, the way her orphaned years made her. She wanted to fulfill the role of the mother she never knew, to Grace and to Henry—and that as a wife to Jefferson.

A sly smile flashed across her lips. That was her next truth.

"We're married," Emma whispered. The word still formed strangely on her lips. It was a perfect impossibility, that two broken, maddened souls could piece each other together again, and even though the stitching was crooked and the colors didn't quite match, they made each other _whole_. It wasn't easy, and it wasn't expected, but it was everything she never knew she always wanted.

Jefferson grunted, and when Emma looked down at him, she found his eyes and not the back of his head. They were dark with madness and wet with tears, but they looked right into hers and her heart thudded with a little less urgency.

"Hey," she smiled gently.

"Hey, Princess," he said weakly, and this time she resolved not to chastise him for the annoying pet name she quietly loved. He glanced cagily around the room, at the shadows the low-hanging moon made lengthen unnaturally across the floor. They reminded him of Wonderland's atrocities, and for a half second Jefferson felt himself being pulled back into that place. In the same breath he felt Emma's mouth, traveling along his neck in kisses, tracing the jagged place where the axe left its mark. He gave into her and not the madness, sighing lightly as he wove his fingers through her hair. "How long was I—"

"Not long." Emma caught his hands and squeezed them reassuringly. "In fact, you didn't even let me finish."

"Finish?" Jefferson stared blearily at her from behind his maddened haze.

She smiled and nodded in a way that seemed nearly shy, diffidence he wasn't accustomed to gracing her features. Emma brought Jefferson's hands to light against her stomach. He bunched her tank top in his hands and methodically rubbed at the fabric. The white ribbing glided across his fingertips, creating a pleasant friction. Emma's hands closed atop his and he stared up at her, wholly surrendered to _her_ and not to the madness that haunted him. Her fingers wiggled between the gaps of his and he surrendered her tank top to grab hold of her hands.

There, with their tangled fingers resting against her stomach's flat planes, she dropped her lips to his ear and whispered her last truth.

"I'm pregnant."


End file.
